Advertisements often found in the local physician's office, depicting a small child in a cold world with the text "this child has a drug problem" is documenting how much need there is for unconventional approaches to fight disease today. Indeed, the Gordon Research conference "Metals in Medicine: Medicinal Inorganic Chemistry" is spearheading just this cause. Solidly rooted in the area of oncology where cisplatin and other platinum drugs have documented the success of metal-based drugs, other areas are still hopefully waiting for similar discoveries. However, with many new approaches the search continues fueled by the past successes, such as Paul Ehrlich's anti-syphilitic agent arsphenamine (Salvarsan). Importantly, the researchers and clinicians need a common forum where information and strategies can be shared. To this end the fertile environment upon which discoveries can be born must be created. The Metals in Medicine Gordon Research Conference will be held at Proctor Academy, NH, June 27-July 2nd, 2010. This meeting will feature a broad range of presentations from a diverse group of speakers from different backgrounds and of different Nationalities. In addition, the mix will include senior level investigators, as well as beginning investigators and student presenters. For the first time in this conference a significant fraction of young scientist presentations will be selected from the submitted abstracts and on an experimental basis thus provide a forum for the students and young and beginning scientists to learn and develop key skills to develop new treatments of disease. We believe that the addition of this new type of presentation is important to our area and can help foster partnerships and collaborations and the development of the drug and treatments of tomorrow. Such an approach will allow a format to update those in the area what is successful in the clinic, as well as the laboratory in the battle of diseases. At the Metals in Medicine Gordon Conference we have the opportunity to bring together a group of interdisciplinary scientists and physicians to share and learn from inorganic chemistry, to biochemistry, biology and medicine in preclinical development and to treatment of patients in an experimental or hospital-type setting. At this meeting we will cover the following seven health-related areas: Oncology, Diagnostics/Imaging, Nuclear Medicine, Infectious and Neurodegenerative Diseases, Metabolic Disorders, Cardiovascular Malady, and Aging. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The Gordon Research Conference Metals in Medicine is a multidisciplinary meeting, in which chemists, biochemists, biologist, pharmacist and clinicians come together to learn the state-of-the-art in both basic sciences and clinical work. Metals in Medicine is a rapidly developing field documented with several key drugs, such as cisplatin in oncology, MRI contrast agents, Cardiolyte radiopharmaceutical imaging agents and nanoscience applications. These novel and unconventional approaches to fighting disease require multidisciplinary connectivity to validate the results needed by researchers to develop in laboratories and clinical settings alike. The meeting will feature both current clinical practices and discovery-level research in the following seven health-related areas: Oncology, Diagnostics/Imaging, Nuclear Medicine, Infectious and Neurodegenerative Diseases, Metabolic Disorders, Cardiovascular Malady, and Aging.